


The Layover

by anniebibananie



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Author!Jon, Businesswoman!Sansa, F/M, Layover, Modern Era, Stuck in airport, airport, fluffy as all hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 20:26:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19875586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniebibananie/pseuds/anniebibananie
Summary: When all the flights are cancelled for the night, Sansa and Jon spend the roughly 12 hours until their rescheduled flights together.This day had begun as an absolute shit show, and it really had no right to have continued on to be anything but. And yet, here she was, getting drunk in a corner of the airport with Jon Snow and enjoying every second of it.





	The Layover

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I wanted to play with the concept of a shortened time span? I write a lot of longer, pining sort of things so I thought having 12 hours would be fun. Hope it still feels like them!

The security line was long, and Sansa’s patience was wearing thin. There had been  _ nothing  _ good about the journey today. She was aware that she could be a bit of a… well,  _ dramatic  _ person, but she felt confident saying that with certainty. The front desk had forgotten her wake up call, the sky was pouring rain outside leaving the drive to the airport in her red rental car unbearable, and now here she was… in the security line from hell. 

She heard her stomach growl again, and she didn’t even feel embarrassed anymore. This was who she was destined to be today—a disaster. 

Finally she was creeping up to the front of the line, and she was ready. Sansa was an accomplished traveler mostly because it felt as if she was always on planes. Her laptop was already out of her bag, she’d worn easy to slip off shoes, and her bag of liquids was in her free hand. Ready. 

The guy in front of her? Not so much. 

She’d spent the last forty minutes staring at the back of his head and wondering what the front of it looked like. His shoulders were strong and sharp from what she could tell through his jacket, he was about her height, and his hair was thick and black and curly. Attractive, really. 

Turns out his face was pretty, too, and usually she would be able to appreciate it more. However, it was hard to when he was shuffling through all of his pockets to grab his belongings as if he hadn’t had nearly an hour standing in line to do so. 

_ Keep it together, Sansa.  _ She took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. 

“Sorry,” he said, turning toward her with a sheepish smile. His voice was nice too—sort of gravelly and soothing. “Think that's all of it.” 

He pulled out an IPod—an honest to god  _ IPod  _ not an Iphone, a separate device to play music as if technology hadn’t evolved to have everything you needed on one object—and dropped it into the basket before turning toward the metal detector. 

“Your shoes,” she called after him. 

He turned, brow scrunched. 

She pointed right to his feet. “You forgot to take off your shoes.” 

“Fuck,” he muttered as his cheeks flushed pinker. He kicked them off and threw them into a bin, and then jogged back to the metal detector. 

She guessed she could at least appreciate his apparent hustle now. He was  _ aware  _ he was being a nuisance in her life. 

As she came out to the other end he was picking up his things (how had all of that come from his  _ pockets? _ ) as she came through and grabbed her shoes, bag, and laptop with ease. She had a system, okay? It was effective for a reason. 

“Hey!” a voice called, and at first she didn’t realize it was calling for  _ her.  _ “Hey!” 

She turned and noticed hot and slow airport man motioning toward her. She realized it wasn’t her best work as far as nicknames went. In his hand, though? Her phone. Maybe her system wasn’t perfect, then. 

“It slipped out of your coat,” he said as he held it out to her. 

“Shit. Thank you.” She took it back and slipped it back into her coat pocket, feeling to make sure it was secure this time before holding out her hand. “I’m Sansa.” 

He clapped his hand back with hers, shaking in a hearty way her father would have loved. “Jon.” 

“Well,” she began, unsure how exactly you ended something like this, “thanks. Again.” 

He nodded, seemingly finding something about this amusing. “Yeah. Sorry about being a bit slow before. You heading toward Concourse C?” 

Sansa was pretty sure this was how the beginning of one of those Lifetime  _ my new boyfriend turned into a stalker and now he locks me in our basement  _ movies started, but she  _ was,  _ and it would be sort of obvious at this point if she ignored him just to keep walking in the same direction. So, she nodded and pulled her suitcase behind her as he readjusted his duffel on his shoulder. 

“You don’t fly a lot?” she asked him. 

“That obvious?” he replied with a charming sort of smile. He shook his head. “No, not really. I’m from the North. Northerners—”

“Don’t like leaving the North, really,” she finished for him. “I’m from the North, too.” 

“Oh?” he asked. “Whereabouts?” 

“Winterfell.” 

His face began to scrunch up, and she couldn’t help the laugh that took over her body. 

“Don’t!” she exclaimed, her smile bright. 

His eyes widened and he held up his free hand. “I didn’t say anything!”

“You were  _ about  _ to. Don’t be one of those Northern boys who’s like Winterfell isn’t  _ true  _ North. You’re from about the Wall, aren't you? I should have known the second I noticed you were wearing lined boots. An  _ elitist _ ,” she teased. 

“I wasn’t going to say it like  _ that _ ,” he replied. 

“Hm, but you were going to say it.” She shook her head. 

“Now who’s being prejudice…” he trailed off teasingly, raising a brow. “Next you’ll be calling me  _ wild  _ and—”

“Oh, I don’t know if there’s anything wild about you. We’ve only just met.” 

The corner of his mouth properly lifted up then, twitching until he couldn’t hold it back. He looked surprised by her in a pleasant way, almost sad when he looked up to see C23 in front of him. “This is me.” 

“I’m…” She motioned behind her across the way to C22. “There.” 

He held out his hand to shake again, and Sansa took it. “It was a pleasure to meet you Sansa.” 

“Right back at you.” She bit her lip mischievously. “Enjoy your flight back to—”

He rolled his eyes and cut her off. “Oh, stop it. Whatever tease you’re about to make.” 

Her smile blossomed, and she reached up to jokingly zip her mouth shut. Then she waved and went to her side of the terminal, feeling pretty sad about having to walk away from Jon no-last-name. 

* * *

About an hour later, the overhead speakers clicked awake with an announcement Sansa would have much rather  _ not  _ heard. 

“Due to inclement weather, the rest of the flights for the evening are cancelled and will be rescheduled for tomorrow morning. See a gate agent for assistance. We are incredibly sorry for this inconvenience.” 

“No,” Sansa mumbled under her breath, pulling out her phone already to get her flight info. She got it rescheduled easily enough through the app, and she’d call to get the travel vouchers she was owed later, but it didn’t matter. “Fuck.” 

She missed her dog and her bed. Probably in that order. 

Feeling tired and frustrated, she grabbed the extra hair tie from her bag and picked her hair up to tie it in a knot. She was going to be spending the night here it would seem, not quite enough time to fight the crowds to get on the bus to shuttle over to the airport hotel. As she finished off wrapping the tie around her hair, her eyes looked across the terminal and saw… Jon, looking right back at her. 

He waved, a little sheepishly at having been caught, but then he motioned with his thumb down the hallway and mouthed  _ Food?  _ and honestly she was pretty endeared. She gave a little wave back and a nod, picking up her things and meeting him in the middle of the busy hallway. 

* * *

“What’s your last name?” Sansa asked as they finally got sat at the sad Chili’s at the end of the terminal. She was just happy they had alcohol and something edible. She was  _ starving.  _

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you going to internet stalk me?” 

“No, I’m going to in real life stalk you.” She held up her phone before putting it in the middle of the table. He took out his own and placed it on top of hers as a sort of unspoken promise. “I don’t know. It just makes me feel better knowing.” 

“I guess I am some strange man you don’t know in an airport,” he replied. He took off his jacket, and Sansa could see the strong slope of his shoulders even better now. “Snow.” 

“Jon Snow.” She let the name out slowly, giving it time to roll around her mouth. “Sounds sort of familiar.” 

He scratched at the back of his neck and picked up the menu. “It’s a generic name. What’s yours?” 

“Stark,” she replied. She was ready for the blow—it always came.  _ Oh, Stark Industries. I know who  _ you  _ are.  _ As if they could  _ possibly  _ know. As if they knew everything about the Stark heiress because of a few tabloids. 

“Sansa Stark,” he repeated, and it was clear he  _ knew  _ but he didn’t seem to care all that much. “Has a nice slant to it.” 

“A nice  _ slant _ ,” she repeated with an incredulous shake of her head. “That’s a nice sort of way to put it.” 

“You  _ southern  _ girls are so hard to please,” he teased. 

She rolled her eyes. “I swear if you call me a southern girl again I will walk out of this overpriced Chili’s. It will be the end of us.” 

“I’m happy to hear there is an us,” Jon said. “I find usually the girls I pick up in airports are so unwilling to really define the relationship.” 

“Oh, shut up,” she replied with a laugh. Her eyes went to the drink menu and she picked it up, looking through all the ridiculous drinks with their even more ridiculous names. “If I can pick your drink, you can pick mine.” 

His smile was practically wicked, and he held his hand out across the table. “Deal.” 

She shook it. It was warm and a little rough. “Deal.” 

* * *

“This is  _ loaded  _ with alcohol.” Sansa cleared her throat and reached for her water. Her empty plate sat in front of her, and she must have been really hungry because while usually it would have filled her up to the brim she mostly felt content. 

Now the two of them sat back and finished off their drinks. Hers was bright pink with two umbrellas and a toothpick holding four cherries. It tasted as sweet as it looked, though it was surprisingly loaded with vodka. His had come with actual cotton candy on the straw and three different layers of frozen tequila slushie. Every time he took a sip his face scrunched up a little, but he kept drinking it anyways. 

She thought he might  _ also  _ be getting drunk off of their one drink which was, again, really saying something about the potency. 

They’d gotten through a lot of basics. Family (Jon: I have a sister named Shireen, we’re both adopted. Sansa: I have too many siblings to count. They’re the worst. I love them), favorite pastimes (Jon: reading, hiking. Sansa: diy projects and taking my dog on walks), and what they liked best about where they were from and what they hated (the answers had gotten sort of long and detailed, and they had both refrained from making fun of the other the whole while. Sansa considered it progress). They’d even shown each other pictures of their dogs, which happened to look oddly suited for one another. 

“You got a beau, Jon Snow?” she asked with a sip or two left of her drink. 

“A  _ beau _ ?” He raised a brow, and the smile he shot her was warm. He was so absolutely warm it sort of made her chest flutter. 

God, what was she? A preteen? Doodling in her notebook and drawing hearts? Arya would have snorted out a laugh at that thought. 

“A beau,” she repeated, nodding as if it added any authority. 

“No,” he answered honestly. “You?” 

She shook her head. “No.” She paused, chewing on her bottom lip. It was sort of weird to ask. Had she made it weird? “I’m a VIP flyer... want to go into the Sky Lounge and steal alcohol?” 

He held his hands over his chest, leaning back in his chair and smiling all the while. “I literally thought you’d  _ never  _ ask.” 

* * *

The airport was calming down for the night, more people having left to go to their complimentary hotel rooms or finding a spot to camp out. Sansa saw now where Jon was in the corner, surrounded by their bags and a few odds and ends. Somehow, he must have gotten an airplane blanket when she had stopped to use the bathroom since it was now covering the carpet in their corner. When he looked up and spotted her, he gave a friendly wave. 

“Time to share the loot?” Sansa asked as she sat down on the blanket facing him, legs crossed. She dumped out her bag to show more than enough alcohol shooters and wines to last them for the night. Honestly, she'd gotten a little carried away.

His eyebrows raised. “Wow.” 

“I’m good at what I do,” Sansa said. 

“And what do you do?” He tilted his head curiously. “Are you secretly a grifter?” 

“Grifter?” she teased. “I get made fun of for beau, but  _ you’re  _ allowed to use grifter? The hypocrisy.” 

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Stop avoiding the question.” 

“I’m good at things,” she joked, rolling her eyes. “That’s what I do, be good at things. Show me your haul, Jon Snow.” 

He reached over to his duffel and grabbed out several bags of chips, m&m’s, and a couple cookies he had managed to wrap up in napkins. Sansa wasn’t sure why that last one made her heart twist so neatly, the idea that he had grabbed them and wanted to transport them safely, but it did. 

“Did I do alright?” he asked. 

Sansa picked up one of the single-serve wines and handed it over to him. “Excellent. With this spot, too. I’ll cheers to that.” They knocked plastic cups and sipped from their warm alcoholic drinks. 

“I had to fight off a few tired people for it, but it was all for a good cause.” 

Sansa leaned back against the wall and let her legs spread out in front of her. She checked the clock, noting she still had about… five hours until her flight. Jon probably had about four, being the one to go out first. The exhaustion of the day was finally starting to catch up to her. 

“What do you do, by the way?” she asked as she rested her head on the wall and turned her eyes back to him. 

He had mimicked her position, mostly, but his legs were brought closer to him so he wouldn’t interlace their legs. She rolled her eyes and reached out for his calves, bringing them to at least rest over her own legs so they could stretch out. 

He laughed. “Thanks.” 

Sansa hated the way he kept looking so  _ amused  _ at everything she did, as if she was a multifaceted jewel that kept sparkling from a different side. She was just being  _ nice,  _ and maybe she was a bit more forward because speaking with Jon felt like speaking with someone she had known her whole life and her exhaustion was definitely playing a part, but whatever. It was whatever. She was allowed to have a good time. 

Mostly, she was trying to not overthink it because this was  _ easy.  _ She hadn’t had easy in what felt like forever. 

“I’m a writer,” he said after a beat. 

“Jon… Snow,” she repeated, the name rolling over her tongue. “Hm, is that why your name sounded so familiar to me?” 

“Probably.” His face scrunched up. “I  _ also  _ kinda know your brother, I think.” 

“Jon!” she exclaimed, laughing all the while. “That’s a thing you tell someone right away. It’s so weirdly creepy to find this out hours into hanging out.” 

“How is finding out Robb knows me  _ more  _ creepy than hanging out with a relative stranger?” 

“I don’t know! It just feels like it is.” She shrugged as she reached forward for a cookie. “How do you know Robb?”

“We were at school together before I dropped out and started attempting the writer thing.” He scratched at the side of his face, contemplating the words. “Good guy.” 

“Hm, and do you like him more or me?” she asked with a teasing twist of her lips, smiling after finishing her bite. 

“You’re dangerous, Sansa Stark. You know that?” 

She wasn’t sure she was dangerous as much as she just didn’t have the energy to pretend, especially not with someone as seemingly open as Jon Snow. He seemed genuinely good, and she was having a good time in turn. This day had begun as an absolute shit show, and it really had no right to have continued on to be anything but. And yet, here she was, getting drunk in a corner of the airport with Jon Snow and enjoying every second of it. 

Absolutely bizarre. 

“It’s a pretty good meet cute for a book, you know,” Sansa replied in an attempt to ignore the question entirely. 

“Us meeting in the security line?” he asked. She nodded. “I don’t normally write those kind of books.” 

She scoffed. “Happy ones? What’s so bad about a happy ending?” 

“I’m not opposed to a happy ending. It’s the middle bit that would be tricky. Lots of conflict. Lots of angst.” He scratched at the back of his neck in that familiar way Sansa had begun to notice as a defense mechanism. When he looked at her, as cliche as it sounded, her breath halted for a beat. As if her lungs instinctively knew the importance of what he was going to say next. “Nothing about you has been anything but good.” 

“And you say I’m dangerous,” Sansa whispered back. “Jon Snow.” 

He didn’t look away, not afraid of the eye contact. Sansa couldn’t help her eyes from dipping toward his lips and contemplating what it would be like to kiss him. He had the sort of lips she thought it was impossible to  _ not  _ think about kissing. She  _ liked  _ him as ill-timed and unexpected as it had been. She could imagine bickering and making up and all sorts of stupid things that shouldn’t be fun but  _ were  _ with him. 

For a second, she could have sworn his eyes were looking at her lips, too. 

The lights in terminal dimmed all at once as if on some sort of timer, and it shocked them from their moment. He cleared his throat, and she readjusted her legs. 

“I should try to get an hour or two of sleep, at least,” she said with a sigh. All she wanted to do was stay up and talk to Jon more, but what was the point, really? 

They weren’t going to the same place. For all practical purposes, they would probably never see each other again. She’d be useless in the morning with no sleep, and she had things to do tomorrow, and she couldn’t  _ care  _ about this handsome, kind stranger across from her. 

“Yeah,” he said in reply. He grabbed to move a few of their finds away, pushing them to the side so they had room to lay down. “Here.” He held out his sweatshirt for her. “A pillow.” 

Anger settled her bones when he did that because  _ who gave him the right.  _ “Thanks,” she said. People that nice? They shouldn’t  _ exist _ . It just wasn’t fair. 

* * *

It turned out… sleeping in an airport was all kinds of horrible. It really should not have been that surprising to her, but there were more  _ sounds  _ than she had expected. Plus, Jon was right next to her, and he was distracting in his own right. 

Sansa wasn’t sure she’d ever met someone before who she clicked with so quickly. In some ways, with his light japes and soft smiles, he seemed sort of unbelievable.

“Sansa?” Jon asked. There was a rustle, and Sansa turned to find his head turned toward her. “You awake?” 

“Yeah,” she answered, though it was fairly obvious considering she was staring right back at him. “Can’t sleep?” 

“I’ve had better mattresses.” He paused, and Sansa waited for him to say whatever it seemed he was going to. “I wanted to kiss you earlier, and I didn’t, but I feel like I should have.” 

“Jon,” she began, turning onto her side. 

“Yeah?” 

“I’m going to kiss you now.” 

“Sure, now that _I_ mentioned it as —”

She cut his words off with her lips, and he didn’t seem to mind that much. Or at all, really. Sansa understood they were in a public setting, and it was sort of weird to make out with a near stranger on the floor of an airport in the  _ broad  _ sense. In the narrow sense it was sort of body altering. For a minute she kissed him easily, their lips moving sort of lazily as they learned the rhythm, but then she wanted  _ more.  _

If she could only get Jon Snow for a few more hours, she wanted to know what it felt like to cup his cheeks and have him hold her hips right back. What were his hands like in her hair? His lips on her neck? 

She rolled over to get on top of him, putting her knees on either side of his waist, and she was grateful she had put her hair up earlier so she didn’t have to deal with the nuisance of it falling into his face. One of his hands found her knee, and the other held the back of her neck, fingers delicately playing at her hair line. 

He brought his other hand back up to her face, holding her cheek as they pulled back for a breath. She left her forehead against his own, and she kept her eyes closed thinking about how the moment already felt as if it was escaping her. How did you hold onto something you knew was destined to end from the moment it began? When it had never actually  _ begun  _ at all, simply existing?

“I really like you,” he whispered. 

“Shit,” she replied. She went and sat back on her heels, smiling down at him in the dim lighting. He was smiling at her—tender, lovely. “I really like you, too.” 

Clearly neither of them had an answer to that. She laid back down on the ground, but this time she rested her cheek against his chest. His fingers played against the skin of her arm. 

“Angst,” she joked. “ _ Conflict. _ ”

“I hate when this happens with all my airport flings.” 

She pushed up for just a second and reached forward to kiss his lips again. He really was too cute for his own good. “Yeah,” she said as she felt back into him, scooting as close as she could manage. “Me too.” 

* * *

Jon stood in front of her looking sort of ruffled, but she couldn’t blame him when she looked about the same. They’d slept on the floor of an airport for heaven’s sake. And by slept Sansa meant that very loosely considering mostly they’d cuddled, made out, and said weird sappy secrets to one another in the dark. 

It had been a good night. It should have been absolute hell, but it was a  _ great  _ night. 

“Do I look as disgusting as I feel?” he asked her as he readjusted his jacket and then threw his duffel over his shoulder. 

She reached into her purse and pulled out her pack of gum and held out a stick to him. “To be safe,” she replied. 

“Are you saying,” he began as he unwrapped the gum then stuck it in his mouth, “that you’ve been making out with me all night just to tell me  _ now  _ my breath is gross.” 

“I’m not saying your breath is gross,” she said as she chewed her own fresh piece of gum, “I’m saying  _ our  _ breath is gross.” 

He narrowed his eyes. “Huh.” 

“Yeah, sounded less weird in my head.” She smiled, finding it hard to  _ stop  _ when all she could think about was getting to lie beside him all night. “Are you excited to get home?” 

“To see my dog and my bed, yeah,” he replied. “Not any of the rest of it.” 

_ Not leaving you, _ she imagined sat between the words. 

“We are now boarding flight 293,” crackled over the speakers. 

“You should probably go.” She motioned behind him, and he turned to see people lining up. “Wouldn't want to miss your flight again.” 

“I didn’t miss it the first time,” he pointed out. He dipped forward and kissed her, slowly and with much too much patience. “What are we going to do?” 

She shrugged. “What is there to do?” 

“We can… play it by ear,” he replied with a nod. 

“See how it goes,” she agreed. She nodded and dipped forward to kiss him again, tugging at the loops in his jeans just because she wanted to feel him close for another minute. “Go.” 

“Going.” But for another minute he didn’t move, and he brought a hand up to her cheek and ran his thumb over the soft skin. “Okay, going.” He kissed her and finally stepped back. 

Sansa hated it. Watching him walk toward the gate sucked, and she hated every time he looked over his shoulder and gave her a sad little wave. When he finally handed over his boarding pass, he seemed to purposefully not look back. 

Maybe it would be easier that way, she thought. And who was she to be getting so  _ dramatic  _ about this whole thing as if they hadn’t only met less than 24 hours ago. Less than _12_ hours ago. She reached out for her rolling bag, ready to finally walk away, when Jon appeared back by the gate agent. 

“That was stupid, right?” he called out to her. 

She laughed, bringing a hand up to her lips as a bunch of strangers watched their interaction. She didn’t care at all. Her chest felt bubbly and light, and she couldn't stop giggling. 

“ _ Play it by ear…  _ what the hell does that mean?” 

The gate agent said something to him, and though Sansa couldn't hear it she could tell they seemed sort of angry. Sansa rushed to get closer to meet him. 

“Sorry, miss,” Sansa said, trying to defuse their light argument. “He’ll get on the flight in just a second. He won’t even cross the check in line.” 

She narrowed her eyes but went back to scanning in the other passengers. 

“You’re not actually that far of a drive from where I am,” he said. “I can drive to take you on a date.” 

“Texting, video chat, calling…” she trailed off, barely able to speak through the words. “I mean, there are a lot of options until we ultimately decide we hate each other and want to go back to being strangers in an airport.” 

“Yeah, exactly,” he agreed as his own smile took over. “I’ll probably text you as soon as I get in my seat because I have very little chill, even if I pretend otherwise.” 

“A very attractive quality.” She bit her lip, and then for what was probably the millionth time today she reached forward and kissed him. 

Somewhere behind her a few people clapped as if this really was a romantic comedy. It was a movie moment, truly, with Jon’s hands cupping her face near and her kissing him as they kept the mandated distance since she couldn’t actually pass the desk without a ticket for this flight. 

“Okay,” she said as she pulled back. “Now go.” 

“I’ll be seeing you.” He pecked her cheek, walking backwards away. 

“You’re sappy.  _ Go. _ ”

“Sansa Stark…” he trailed off, whistling. “Dangerous.” 

Then he disappeared down the tunnel, and Sansa was left with the embarrassing task of collecting herself and walking through all the people who had watched her near love declaration in the middle of an airport. As she fell into one of the sticky, vinyl chairs in front of her own gate, she heard a text come through. 

**Unknown Number. Might be: Jon Snow**

_ Hey. This is Jon Snow.  _

_ Obviously.  _

_ Just made out in front of a bunch of random strangers?  _

**Sansa**

_ I might recall.  _

_ You like Italian food? There’s a great place near mine.  _

**Jon**

_ Sounds like a date. Flight is about to take off, gotta go.  _

_ Talk to you soon.  _

**Sansa**

_ See you soon. Very important distinction.  _

  
Sansa watched his flight take off, the plane zooming into the sky, and felt an excitement take root in her stomach. The same sort of feeling when the plane was rushing forward, wheels slightly off the ground, and the sky stood in front of you open and blue. Going somewhere, the destination not in sight, but knowing you would arrive all the same. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at: [anniebibananie](http://anniebibananie.tumblr.com/)


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